It has been a while since I released an update. This one includes some fairly significant changes, plus lots of little ones. Here is a brief list of what's new:
New DLC Coming Soon: Many changes were needed under the hood for the new DLC world soon to be released: The Desert Wasteland. This world is unlike any others because it is a mix of both outdoors and indoors so it required many changes for that. I'm excited about this release, and I think you'll like it. It took me a lot longer than expected to crank it out, but I am pretty happy with the end product. It is visually interesting with an Egyptian flair and has many new and challenging monsters (40 of them). Keep your eyes peeled because I should be releasing that in the next week or so.
Better Initial Experience: Responding to some new players' frustrations where the "to hit" percentage is consistently low leading to long battles, new games now start out at the easiest difficulty level by default. This will boost your ACCURACY and lower monsters' DEFENSE resulting in landing hits more frequently. You still need to manage stamina by using DEFEND, but the initial experience should be better now. After two battles, and hopefully the player is more familiar with the combat system, you will be prompted to choose which difficulty level you wish to continue playing at.
Lighting and Line-of-Sight (LOS): The systems for these have been improved to more realistically render shadows behind objects, people, and monsters, as well as take body/object size and position (e.g., flying, down) into account. Walls that branch off of other walls and should not be visible are now hidden. Issues with LOS through wall corners have been fixed, and what light and targets open doors and doorways block is more realistic.
Combat Engagement: The distance required for monsters to engage has been shortened in general, and their aggression now plays a greater role in whether they engage. Some are so docile you can get very close before they attack. And some are very hostile and territorial. The Bestiary generally will give clues as to how they react. When encountering sleeping monsters, combat no longer automatically starts in "sneak" mode. You can walk around in real-time and even try to sneak up on them. Monsters that are awoken by sounds will now sit up and become cautious, and may even get up and investigate. If they spot you (or you use an offensive ability) combat will start.
Static FX on the Map: The large map and mini-map now display static effects (e.g., smoke, poison cloud, ground fires, etc.) as flashing purple squares. They flash so you can see objects/people that may be in the same square. This will help with navigating during combat and avoiding moving into negative effects.
New Quests: 20 new quests have been added, including several multi-part ones with custom maps. Note that some of these require particular DLC, including the upcoming The Desert Wasteland.
Health/Stamina Stats: MAXIMUM HEALTH (the upper limit of how much you can heal on an expedition) is displayed as a vertical white line over your red HEALTH bar near your portrait in the lower-left corner. But during combat, this displays only for the current player. If you want to see anyone else's maximum, it is now displayed in the tooltip text on the ATTRIBUTES screen for HEALTH (just tap on the heart icon). Ditto for MAXIMUM STAMINA.
They Just Won't Die!: I think I've finally figured out the issue where some creatures appear close to death and need just one more hit to die, but they don't. Sometimes, it is legitimate because if their armor mitigates all incoming damage they will still be at zero HP and still alive. But I believe that in some cases they looked like they had zero HP, but due to a rounding error they technically had a small amount left (like 0.05 HP). I have changed the HEALTH display on the ATTRIBUTES screen to always show a minimum value of 0.1 if they have anything left. Also, their HEALTH bar above them should display a small sliver if they have anything left (note that depending on your zoom level you may or may not see this). Hopefully, this will avoid confusion.
Curses: These are nasty afflictions that some monsters can inflict on you, and they can't be healed by the Herbalist like DISEASES can. These require the Wandering Crone, who only periodically shows up in town. Also, she shuns coin and will require other forms of payment to cure you.
Traps, Lockpicking, and Secret Doors: Floor traps have been added. These can vary in type from spikes, elemental, poison, or exploding. Before any character steps on them there is an automatic DETECT TRAP check made, and if successful they will stop before moving onto it and the trap will be highlighted. You can choose to go around or continue onto it for an automatic DISARM TRAP attempt. If not detected, it will be triggered when stepped on. Also, the specific stats for LOCKPICKING are now displayed in the COMBAT LOG when an attempt is made. Plus, walking next to a secret door will trigger an automatic detection check using your DETECT TRAP stats. Lastly, the DISARM TRAP stat on the ATTRIBUTES screen was previously displaying the numbers for DETECT TRAP. This has been fixed.
Improvements on World Generation: Many of the worlds have been tweaked to improve their aesthetic. There are now groves of trees, sometimes with roads cutting through them, iceberg fields, fewer rocks for easier navigation in The Abysmal Furnaces, a better mix of rooms in The Infernal Dungeons, and vine-covered ruin walls in The Swampy Isles. Roads are now more likely to lead to something significant, like a ruin or a monster den.
Here are some other changes:
- When combat starts, the COMBAT LOG will note if any players are HEAVILY BURDENED (75%+) and therefore have lower STAMINA REGENERATION.
- The CURRENT QUEST icon at the top of the screen will now highlight when the success terms are met and an entry will be made in the COMBAT LOG, and the audible sound for any kind of quest notification is more noticeable now.
- Cloth and Padded armors are more likely to be magikal, and some Mage/Druid-targeted properties (like a boost to elemental ACCURACY or DAMAGE) are only available for cloth or padded.
- Status effects (e.g., bleed, poison, etc.) can now last beyond combat and require intervention to remedy.
- The buying/selling modifier per CHR over 8 has been changed from 5% to 3%.
- Abilities now indicate in their stats if they are PHYSICAL, which is important because spirits cannot be harmed by these (even if they are also MAGIK). Also, PHYSICAL abilities that also potentially do KNOCKDOWN now take relative size of the attacker and defender into account.
- Combat responses (e.g., "Yes!", "Awww!") now sound negative even if you hit but all damage is mitigated by something like armor and there was not a successful negative effect applied.
- The large map now pans quicker (it was pretty slow before when zoomed all the way out on a good-sized map).
This is certainly not the complete list. There were lots of tweaks, including to many abilities, plus many bug fixes. The full list can be seen in the release notes: https://www.infinitedungeoncrawler.com/release-notes/
One last note: Steam is good about automatically updating game content, but if you ever see an update notice and your build # (down in the lower-left corner of most screens) doesn't match, check your settings for the game in Steam and make sure updates are turned on. One trick I've found to force it to update is to go to the game listing, then MANAGE, then GAME PROPERTIES. Under LOCAL FILES click on the button for VERIFY INTEGRITY OF GAME FILES... I've found that that will force the update to the latest.
